Could Sean McVay be nearing his end with the Rams? | You Pod To Win The Game
Yahoo Sports Senior NFL Writer Charles Robinson and NFL Writer Frank Schwab discuss the disappointing showing from the Los Angeles Rams this season, and debate if we may be seeing the beginning of the end of Sean McVay in Los Angeles.
Video transcript
CHARLES ROBINSON: The Tampa Bay Buccaneers win at home 16 to 13 over the LA Rams. Tom Brady has the game-winning touchdown drive at the end of the game. The ending was great.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah.
CHARLES ROBINSON: You know, the ending was. But I mean--
FRANK SCHWAB: The last 44 seconds.
CHARLES ROBINSON: On balance, it was a pretty ugly game to watch.
FRANK SCHWAB: It was awful
CHARLES ROBINSON: It was pretty terrible. I'll just focus on the Rams. It just feels like things are just caught up. The way you spend, you go for the big guys, and you're trying to max the window out and everything, and then all of a sudden when it doesn't work, this is how it doesn't work. It's not subtle. It's big.
And I was told in the organization, hey, we're always going to max it out as long as we have Matt and Sean and Aaron Donald. Those three guys, as long as those three guys are on the roster and playing at a high level, we will consider our Super Bowl window open. We will do everything we can to continue to max out that Super Bowl window as long as we possibly can.
I do believe, though, and I will say this, I think that when that window closes, especially with Matt Stafford, I definitely will look at Sean McVay and wonder if he hangs around this is just not going away with him and him not being a guy who wants to coach until he's 70, let alone his maybe mid 40s.
FRANK SCHWAB: And that's what I wanted to ask you about because I'm kind of kicking around this idea. The Rams were 3 and 5. They had 206 yards in this game. And 69 of it came on Cooper Kupp's touchdown. Other than Cooper Kupp's touchdown, the first half today, they had 35 yards on 26 plays. They needed one first down at the end. They could not get it. How much of this falls on Sean McVay? We have really not talked about him.
And here's a guy who right after the season, all these stories come up. Sean McVay is considering retirement, Fox, all this kind of stuff. You need full focus. You need to be all-- to defend a Super Bowl championship is really, really tough. When your head coach is like, maybe I'll just retire, is he all in? There's this sense of McVay is not really in this anymore, like he got to the peak and what does he do next?
I think the whole retirement thing kind of set the tone for this really, really disappointing Rams season, where their offense is broken. And look, I'm not saying that he has a ton to work with. There's a lot of personnel issues here. But other coaches have figured out an offense with personnel issues. And Sean McVay can't. What's going on there?
CHARLES ROBINSON: His closest confidant-- and this came from Sean. Like, I straight up talked to Sean about this. He straight up told me that his closest confidant on that offense was Kevin O'Connell. He had more trust in Kevin O'Connell. Kevin O'Connell was going to run the offense this year. He's going to call the plays.
Part of that trust that he had in Kevin O'Connell was-- and this was Sean who told me this-- it was being able to bring to Kevin the things that were really deeply bothering him from a football standpoint, in terms of how maybe things were scheming or an evaluation of a player or why something was broken.
Here's the thing, despite his personality-- and everyone's just like, oh, Sean, he's this great guy. He has a smile, and he has this high energy. He's not a guy who just trusts everybody, particularly when it comes to opening up, like, hey, here's my vulnerabilities. Here's what's bothering me. Here's what's undermining my thought process as a coach. He doesn't invest in everybody like that.
And O'Connell was one of those guys. And McVay straight up told me, like, it was a huge loss to have him leave, even though Sean pushed it, was like, he's ready. And to lose kind of who the guy you think is your-- it's my partner, man. This is the one who I trust. I will actually give the keys to an offense. Imagine, Sean McVay, of all people, saying, I'll give you the keys to offense so I can go do other things and grow in other ways, whatever the case is
FRANK SCHWAB: And you've written the best stories about McVay probably of anybody. So that's why I wanted to really ask you because we haven't really held McVay's feet to the fire for this very often. He's supposed to be the offensive genius. He's supposed to be the next great coach. He's going to break down Shula's record because he's going to be great until he's 70.
And it just-- this is a bad year for him. And it's a bad year for the Rams. And kind of until further notice, they're kind of irrelevant too. Like, I just don't really see their season going anywhere.
